Frank Martin Got It Half Right

Social media was buzzing earlier this week with some comments from South Carolina University men's basketball coach Frank Martin. If you've never heard of Coach Martin, he's getting set to lead his Gamecocks into the Final Four this Saturday for the first time in school history. The coach was replying to a reporter's question and shared his opinion on kids. More specifically, he shared his opinion on adults in charge of kids. Here's the quote as seen on Twitter and Facebook:

Coach Martin isn't alone with his feelings. I hear parents and youth coaches complain about the same thing today. I don't have a problem the coach stating his opinion. He was talking with the media and said what he feels. I also don't have a problem with the countless "re-tweets", "likes" and "attaboy" comments I saw on my social media feeds. But guess what? I heard the same thing 30-40 years ago when I was a young athlete. I also have an opinion and I think the coach got it half right.

Remember when you were a kid? Your father or your grandfather probably told you THAT story. You know, the one about walking to school... in the snow... uphill and both ways! Coach Martin is telling the 2017 version of that same story. It's a little different, but the moral is the same. Times were tougher for kids back in the day. Oh, baloney.

Like I said, I think the coach got it half right. Kids haven't changed. They don't know anything about anything. We agree on that. We also agree that adults have changed. But here's the difference. Do we demand less and expect less of kids today? No way. We demand and expect more. A lot more.

I had a 6th grade parent tell me a couple months ago his son was starting to lift weights for junior high football in the fall. My sophomore daughter runs twelve months per year trying to stay in shape for spring track and fall cross country. I hear about kids in the gym before school starts getting up a couple hundred shots just to be ready for winter basketball season. Most all of this is spurred by adult demands and expectations. We never did that crap when I was growing up.

Coach Martin says we make their lives easier instead of preparing them for what life is truly about. If life is truly about working crazy hard, I would say adults today are doing just fine.

These kids from the 1980's were the same as kids today!

Joe Ward Invitational

Russia senior Drew Poling high jumped 6'-00" to win Tuesday's Joe Ward Invitational

SIDNEY - The big schools dominated Tuesday's annual Joe Ward Invitational in Sidney. On the boys side Dunbar finished in first place with 139.5 points, followed by Trotwood-Madison with 111 and Lima Senior with 73.5. Locally, Sidney finished in fourth place and Russia tied with Greenville for fifth. Thirteen teams competed overall.

On the girls side Lima Senior took first place with 141 points and was followed by Tecumseh with 112 and Greenville with 83.5. Area teams included Russia in fifth place, Lehman Catholic in eighth place, and New Knoxville was thirteenth out of fourteen teams. 

Individual event winners from the area included the following:

A complete list of results can be found at: http://live.finishtiming.com/#/results/meet/20170034

Russia, Greenville and New Knoxville were a few of the local teams that competed on the girls side

Final Four Memories - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s.

Final Four Memories

Last year during March Madness, I shared a story about Ohio State’s Final Four exploits back in the early ’60’s, losing in the finals two straight years to Cincinnati. For this blogpost, let’s fast forward a few years to 1967 when the University of Dayton made it to the Final Four. At the time, I was living with three UD students from Anna, Minster and Ft. Loramie in the upper level of a house located at 521/2 Anderson within blocks of campus Although I was attending college at General Motors Institute in Michigan, March of 1967 found me working at a GM plant, Frigidaire in Dayton, as part of GMI’s coop rotation program to provide practical experience that complemented my education. So being around campus during that run to the Final Four by Dayton was really special. The only problem was that I had to get up early to work the day after the games, while my roommates, and likely most of the UD student body, slept in and skipped class!

The Flyers were lead by coach Don Donoher, who guided the team to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen in his first two years as coach; then led the Flyers to the 1967 NCAA Championship game by beating Western Kentucky, #8 ranked Tennessee, Virginia Tech, and #4 ranked North Carolina, before falling to #1 ranked and eventual champion UCLA 79–64 in the final. It was quite a run. I can still visualize the exact seat at the newly opened Timothy’s Bar along Brown Street where I watched UD upset highly favored North Carolina in the Final Four. The star for UD was Don May, No. 21 in the above team photo, with 34 points and 15 rebounds. Don was a small forward the same size as me who could really shoot and rebound with a passion. He carried the team on his broad shoulders that season, especially against NC. But in the finals against UCLA, 7 footer Lew Alcindor, aka Kareem Abdul-Jabbar intimidated the Flyers with his height and shot blocking. Even though May got 21 points and 17 rebounds against them, it wasn’t enough. 

UCLA was undefeated that year and Dayton ended up 21-6. May was named first team All-American and went on to play in the NBA for the New York Knicks. Read more about the ’67 Flyers at this link and catch a recent photo of the team below at the 50th anniversary of that magical season earlier this year. Coach Donoher is second from the right and Don May is the guy on the far right with a basketball in his hands. Point guard Bobby Joe Hooper is holding up the trophy.